The customer couldn't get AT&T or Apple stores to unlock his iPhone, so he went straight to Tim Cook for help

An Apple user recently ran into some trouble when trying to unlock his iPhone through AT&T, but the customer got some help from the top dog himself -- Apple CEO Tim Cook.

An AT&T customer was reassigned to Canada for his job, and decided to buy his wife an iPhone 4 while he took her iPhone 3GS. He was hoping to use the iPhone 3GS on a Canadian carrier's pay-as-you-go plan because he already had a BlackBerry that he used for work, but as an avid Apple fan, wanted his iPhone at his side as well.

When visiting AT&T to unlock his iPhone 3GS, AT&T said Apple was the only one who could do so. When visiting Apple for the same reason, Apple said only AT&T could unlock the device. He went back and forth hearing the same answers until AT&T finally told him to just jailbreak the iPhone.

The customer, however, didn't want to do that. He enjoyed the Apple user experience, and desperate from trying to achieve this goal with AT&T and Apple stores, the customer went straight to the head of Apple -- he emailed Cook.

A portion of the email is as follows:.

Basically AT&T told me that they couldn’t unlock it, only Apple could. I called Apple (but was routed through Apple Canada) and they told me “ask to talk to a supervisor at AT&T because the customer service rep won’t know the process, but AT&T definitely can unlock it”. So I called them back and the supervisor was adamant that they couldn’t help me. “Just jailbreak your phone” was their advice.

I didn’t want to jailbreak my phone, I like Apple’s curated experience and I don’t want to stray from that. However after several more calls to both AT&T and Apple, I made no progress. So I’m turning to you for a final plea.

Cook took the message quite seriously, and contacted AT&T about the matter. He instructed the company to unlock this customer's phone. AT&T confirmed the IMEI's for the iPhone 3GS, then contacted the customer to tell him that it would make an exception for him per Cook's orders. The customer was told to tether his iPhone 3GS to iTunes to finish unlocking his device.

It didn't end there, though. After successfully unlocking his iPhone, the customer received a phone call from Cook's assistant making sure that AT&T followed through with the unlock.

"Mid day my wife sent me an email at work saying, 'Um, Tim Cook's special assistant just called and she wants to know if AT&T has unlocked your phone yet??? Why does Tim Cook care about your phone?'" said the customer.